Synonyms For Better

What Would You Be Doing if You Didn't Aim To Do More?

Another Monday, Another Naive Weekly - Curated stories on Technology and Internet Culture.

I read around 15 newsletters. Most of them are directly linked to this newsletter. They bring stories to my attention, offer unique perspectives and nudge me to write better.

One newsletter that has been an important inspiration for starting my newsletter with this longer, often personal story, is Paul Jarvis’ Sunday Dispatches. Every Sunday, Paul shares what feels like an old-school blog post. The emails have a minimal amount of links, there is little to no styling and lists are rare exceptions.

Recently Paul was the guest in Jocelyn K. Glei’s podcast Hurry Slowly. I recommend to give the episode and the whole podcast a listen. Both are insightful in how to stay sane in and insanely urgent society.

Especially one thought from their conversation stood out: when you look in the dictionary for synonyms to ‘better’, you won’t find ‘more’. Neither will you find faster, cheaper or newer.

I often seem to be rushing through the days to achieve more, in shorter times and in new ways. I wonder how I’d spend my days if I aimed to do things better. Brb.

Five Stories on Technology and Internet Culture

1. Metrics for Healthy Conversations

   For the past year Twitter has been on a mission to improve the quality of the conversations on the platform. To develop metrics to signify healthy conversations is at the core of the mission. This Recode article is one of the better writings on how product features influence our social interactions.

2. The Sharing Economy Was Always a Scam

   Beyond the hyperbolic title, this post by Susie Cagle offers a good historic tale of how the sharing economy went from being our saviour to a Trojan horse in only a decade. Susie argues that the sharing economy today can be reduced to transactions, feeding return hungry venture-capitalists, with those companies who failed to reach scale already closed down. While Susie seems wary of putting hope in blockchain as an alternative, she notes the rise of cooperative with some hope.

3. Watching Plants Grow

   I’m increasingly seeing articles written around a single subreddit. This makes me wonder if Reddit recently has hired a new PR agency. Nonetheless, I appreciate being introduced to Subreddits like r/watchplantsgrow.

4. Adding Colour to Black and White Photos

   Okay. Technology is pretty incredible. At least I’m impressed by ColouriseSG’s ability to add colours to black and white photos.

5. New Social Media

   Last week Mark Zuckerberg shared a post outlining the principles Facebook is going to follow. You can decide if you want to believe Mark’s words and you can doubt the motivations for outlining these principles. Yet I believe it is worth noting what the world’s largest social media company thinks about where social media is heading. Above I’ve linked to a conversation between Mark and Wired’s Nicholas Thompson. The first phase of social media has been about creating the town square, now it seems to be about building the living room.

Thank you Angela & Tina

Hi, I’m Kristoffer and I’m one of the founders of co-matter. You just read Naive Weekly - Curated stories on Technology and Internet Culture.

People! You are pretty amazing. Last week we welcomed two (!) paying subscribers. Making it the third week in a row with a new subscriber. Thank you Tina & Angela! The newsletter now has five paying subscribers, Nikolaj, Dries, Mikkel, Tina & Angela. It blows my mind.

If anyone is in Copenhagen this Wednesday, I’d be happy to see you at a session we are hosting at Space10 about connecting to the internet.

<3

K